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According to the messages from a Forerunner known as The Librarian contained throughout the Terminals on the Ark, the artifact on Earth was the last of numerous gateways constructed throughout the galaxy, and was buried shortly before the activation of the Halo rings. An ancient African elder named N'chala witnessed its construction by Strato-Sentinels. The Artifact itself was formed from a disassembled Gargantua-class transport.

The Prophet of Truth landed the Forerunner Dreadnought on the Forerunner structure, and an unusual cyclonic electric storm started up above it. Before its activation, Truth traveled to the Superintendent's data center deep under New Mombasa, where Covenant forces had excavated a tunnel leading into the Artifacts' underground sections.[4]

The storm was first seen in the Halo 3Announcement Trailer, when the camera shows the artifact being uncovered and activated. The storm lies directly over it, lightning bolts are seen flashing out of the clouds, and the formation seems to have an eye, like a hurricane would. When the portal is activated, the beam travels up through this eye and disappears.

In the level Crow's Nest, when a player looks up at some of the computer monitors, you will see a map of the local area. The map will have a mass of clouds beginning to show a swirling motion around the area. When you enter the level Tsavo Highway, you can see a doughnut-shaped mass of clouds above the artifact that the Covenant are excavating. When you proceed to the level The Storm, the storm has intensified and grown. The clouds now bring rain to the area, and certain parts of the cloud glow as if cloud-to-cloud lightning is occurring. When Truth activates the Artifact, the solid blue beam shoots up into the cloud formation's eye and opens the portal to the Ark.

After the portal is opened, and the level Floodgate begins, the remains of the clouds are seen broken up and swirling around the portal in the sky, having been disrupted by the opening of the portal itself.

The artifact is also seen in the ending cinematic of Halo 3: ODST, where a fleet of Covenant ships are excavating the object.

Interpretations of the size of the Artifact vary. In-game, the diameter of the structure is estimated to be 25.515 kilometers using the size of a Covenant Battlecruiser above the portal and an overhead image or Pan Cam coordinates.[6] However, several geographical facts seem to imply otherwise. As evidenced by Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST, the Portal stretches from the edge of the metropolis of New Mombasa all the way to the edge of Voi. The distance between these cities is well over 100 kilometers. In this light, a diameter of mere 25.5 kilometers is an impossibility. This is further evidenced by the ending cutscene of Halo 3, where the Portal is seen from low orbit. It is clearly close to the African coastline instead of being deep into the mainland, which would inevitably be the case if the portal was only 25 kilometers in diameter.

If the intended diameter of the structure was a mere 25 kilometers, it would also mean that the Forerunner Dreadnought would be radically smaller than it appears to be in Halo 2 and Halo: Uprising.[7][8][9][10] Thus it can be assumed that the portal is likely smaller in-game than its actual intended size, due to engine limitations; generating map geometry for over a 10,700 km2 area would be an impossibility on the Halo 3 engine.

It should be noted that these estimates are centered around the size of the excavated portion of the Portal. The extent of the underground installations surrounding it is still unknown.

In the "Behind the Scenes" section on the Halo 2 Collectors Edition, there is actually a sketch of the Artifact upon activation.

At a point in the level The Storm, a group of UNSC Marines are present around a radio. Intel comes over the communications channel and says,"...winds inside the storm have been clocked at over 200 kilometers per hour."

The Artifact was originally both underground and submerged, lying under a massive ocean inlet. By the events of Halo 3, the entire lake and the earth below had been vaporized by Covenant ships to unveil the Artifact.

When the frontal half of the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn came back to Earth through the portal, instead of exiting it above the structure where the Slipspace rift would be, it ended up exiting in Earth's orbit, due to the portal being closed. This indicates that from the Ark, one-way access through the portal was possible, even if the portal was closed.

The 14 monoliths/petals that lift up after activation of the portal is another reference to the number 7 (7+7=14). The entire structure seems to be constructed of seven identical parts, with seven pairs of monoliths/petals.

It has been further stated by Bungie that at one point, during story conception, the area that ended up being the Portal had originally been intended to be the Ark itself.

The monoliths/petals bear a striking resemblance to the monoliths around the Atmosphere Processor from the film Aliens.